× Mercury

"I did it."

I looked up from my phone and saw Matt sitting beside me. His cheeks were flushed and he stared out in front of him with his chocolate brown eyes like he just murdered someone and was now realizing it.

"How'd they take it?" I asked.

"Well, actually," he explained. "Reece made a douchebag comment and Andrew asked if I'd have sex with him, but it was all banter."

I nudged my shoulder with his. "I'm proud of you."

Earlier that day, Matt had texting me saying he was going to tell the team he was gay. He had asked if I had ideas on how he should do it, and I responded saying the most effective way was to just tell them straight-up. He had agreed.

But then he came up to me before practice saying he couldn't do it and that he was too worried what they would think. I explained that telling them one by one would work just the same, maybe even better because it would be a little more personal.

And now we were here, sitting on the bench waiting for Coach to arrive to start practice, our team on the field stretched, new information on their teammate going through their mind.

"I told you they wouldn't have a problem with it," I said with a smile.

"Don't say that yet," Matt warned. "I told them after we were in the locker room. Wait until after when everyone is taking showers and changing."

Before I could respond, my phone started to ring in my hand. Matt saw who was calling and told me to take it and that we would talk later, before standing up and joining the team on the field.

"Lynn! You're never going to believe what I just heard," Jamie said through the other end. I wanted to laugh. University gossip never seemed to go away even if you were on the other side of the planet. "Coach Sharp scheduled an early practice before classes today because of the big game this weekend, and she told everyone some shocking news-"

"She's pregnant!" I shouted.

My teammates closest to me looked over, confusion on their faces. I gave them a look and spun around in my seat so my back faced them for my privacy.

Jamie sighed into the phone with aspiration. "Coach isn't, but Lucy is! She's twelve weeks pregnant and was kicked off the team! I talked to her a few minutes ago. But that's not the half of it, guess who the father is."

My heart sank. I didn't need to make a guess, I didn't need to say the name out loud to get confirmation that I was right. I saw it happen right in front of me. I wrapped an arm around my stomach and leaned forward in my seat, feeling suddenly ill. I couldn't help but think back to UCLA and to the time I walked in on Lucy and Bradley in bed together. If she was twelve weeks in, then the time line made sense and I almost threw up right then and there.

"Is he..." I trailed off, swallowing the bile in my throat. "Is he with Lucy?"

"What do you think?" Jamie said bitterly. "He want's nothing to do with her. Won't even respond to her texts let alone look at her. It's disgusting how he can just throw away someone like this. It's his own damn fault he didn't wrap it up!"

I should have been happy to hear that Lucy was knocked up by my kind-of-boyfriend at the time. I should have been thrilled that she was off the team to care for the child and lose any chance she had to getting anywhere in the soccer industry. But I wasn't. Quite the opposite, really.

I couldn't help but think that that could have been me. I was careful to be protective, but there was always that nagging voice in my head that told me to never fully trust Bradley. The voice drove me insane. It drove me right to a pharmacy so I could go on the pill to eliminate the risk of getting pregnant. But even then, the voice was still there, reminding me that nothing is guaranteed.

Hearing Lucy was pregnant with Bradley's baby made me angry... for Lucy. I didn't have the heart to be joyful about this because I knew Lucy felt horrible about the whole thing, and what she needed the most was support since the one source of sustenance she needed abandoned her, she's left in the dust.

Single, scared, and dreamless, all because of one stupid decision that could have been mine.

"Hey," Jamie said, breaking me away from my thoughts. "Are you okay?"

"I don't know," I said truthfully, and that pretty much summed up my whole life at that moment. The situation with Lucy and Bradley, Harry and I... Niall. It was just one big I don't know and it left an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of my gut. "I just don't know."

× × ×

The checkered ball passed right under my foot as I tried to stop it and I cursed under my breath. The ring of the whistle going off made me close my eyes tight and groan in frustration.

"Mercury!" Coach shouted from the side lines, gripping his clipboard to his chest. "That's the fourth time you missed a pass. Bring it in."

Biting my cheek to keep from screaming, I abandoned the ball that rolled behind me and walked the pitch to Coach. Jace tried to get my attention but I ignored him along with everyone else on the field. I just wanted to go back to the dorm and take a comatose nap.

"What's up with you?" Coach asked as I approached. "Is it because Niall's not here?"

"What?" I questioned him, slightly offended. "No, I didn't even... No. I just got some bad news back home, I'm sorry. I'll try to do better."

In all honestly, I didn't even notice Niall wasn't at practice. I looked behind me just to make sure I didn't skim past him somehow, but I knew he wouldn't be on the field or on the bench. Subconsciously, I knew he wasn't there. I was way too distracted to even acknowledge my teammates presences.

Coach sighed and dropped his clipboard. I looked at it as it fell to the fake green grass. I was confident he was about to give me one of his famous lectures I was gifted to hear a few times about putting any personal and emotional drama to the side and focus on the game.

"You're doing markedly well on this team, Lynn," Coach said surprising me as he crossed his arms over his chest. "You being here had made it easier to get these twits off their arses and play. I know I don't give you enough credit, it's not something I'm very familiar with and I apologize because everyone on this team is doing so well. So I know you don't hear it enough, but you're doing great. Coach Sharp would be proud."

I stood in front of him in shock. I mean, I knew I was doing well on the team. I had to be to keep up with the boys, so I was giving myself enough gratitude for the both of us. But for some reason, hearing it from him made it more real and I was left speechless.

"Why don't you take a break from scrimmaging and do some laps around the pitch," Coach said. "Running seems to clear my head, maybe it will for you."

Nodding, I grabbed my maroon Nike training jacket from the bench and pulled it on over my shirt and started my jog around the field. As I ran, the scrimmage game had continued. Matt subbed in for me and I tried to concentrate on the game as I did my laps. I put my focus on the boy's footing techniques and communications across the pitch as they ran around. It seemed to take my mind off of Lucy and Bradley, at least for the time being.

I had lost count of how many rounds I had ran when I looked over at Coach. He was shaking hands with a man in faded jeans and a navy blue sweater. With them stood Niall in a black track jacket and shorts, listening into their conversation.

For a second I thought maybe the man was a recruiter asking about Niall, but as soon as the guy turned to face the pitch, I nearly tripped over my own feet because I was staring at my father. Wavy, brown hair cut short at the sides and messy in the front, small curls against his forehead. I was too far away, but I knew the man had warm brown eyes that light up when he smiles.

I was instantly taken back in time when I was thirteen, outside my middle school kicking a soccer ball around, my mother and father on the sidelines cheering me on as I ran across the grass.

But my father died in the house fire with my mom three years ago... so that left only one other person who it could be.

"Anders!?" I shouted across the pitch.

Some of my teammates playing the scrimmage game stopped to stare at me like I had lost my mind. And maybe I had, because it had been way too long since I'd last seen my brother.

From the sound of his name, Anders looked over and a huge smile grew on his face and I knew then that miracles really did happen.

I started running toward him at full speed, any of my teammates knew better than to get in my way so they quickly parted for me to pass. Anders started to run at me, too, but I was too quick because the next thing either of us knew, I was flinging myself on him like there was a magnetic pull between us.

It had been forever and a day since I had last seen him so a simple tackle hug would never be sufficient for this reunion, but I was well aware of every eye on the two of us, no doubt wondering who the dude was I had just mauled.

I unwound my arms from around his neck and punched him in the arm.

"Ow!" Anders yelped and rubbed the spot, but a smile was on his lips nevertheless. "What was that for?"

"Six months!" I shouted. "Six months since I last heard from you! No letter, no video chat! What the hell is wrong with you?!" I shouted, hitting him again, this time his other arm. And then I gave in with the overwhelming joy and crushed him in a hug once more.

"Surprise," Anders said weakly after I let him go. "But I honestly wouldn't even be here if it wasn't for your teammate."

"My-?" I stopped myself, finally understanding what was going on.

Looking over Anders' shoulder, I saw Niall talking with Coach. He looked over at me and our eyes locked momentarily before he went back to Coach.

"Oh."

Anders crossed his arms over his chest and looked out at the other players who had gone back to the scrimmage game. "Apparently his brother knows some people in the Force in America and got my commander to let me go home for Thanksgiving."

His brother? A memory ticked in the back of my mind. I remembered Niall and I getting pizza after the recruiter dinner, he mentioned something about his brother. He said that he didn't talk to him anymore and that they had grown distant.

Niall had secrets. He had motives. Inside of this boy was an entire world that I didn't know - didn't have answers to - and that scared me. It scared me a lot.

Niall is often stuck in this strange middle ground - a monotone, emotionless nightmare. His whole personality is a poker face, which means that his words don't give way to what he's thinking. So why in the world he willing called up his brother just to arrange all this for me was impossible to figure out.

Niall Horan might just be a book that I'll never be able to open.

"But enough about that, I'm here... in London!" Anders expressed excitedly, his single dimple on full display. "And you! A full scholarship for soccer! If dad where here he would be over the moon about this. When did this all happen, anyways?"

"A few months ago," I explained. I was about to tell him that he would know all this if he bothered to call, but I bit my tongue. "I can tell you all about this later, but I think I should really get back to practice. Coach is kind of a hard ass."

Anders looked over his shoulder at Coach Mathews who was watching us. Niall had disappeared and I saw that he had somehow snuck out of my peripheral vision and onto the pitch behind me and was playing in the scrimmage game.

"Right," Anders said with a shy grin. "I'll just be waiting on the sidelines like old times."

× × ×

It was nearly eight thirty by the time my brother and I got to my dorm room. I had hoped Chloe wouldn't be there, so naturally, she was. So when Anders and I stepped inside the door, you could only envisage the look on Chloe's face when she saw my brother behind me.

"Ohh..." she said in admiration from her computer desk, dropping the pen that she was chewing on. "Who's this?"

"What are you doing here?" I asked as I placed one of Anders' travel bags on the floor next to my bed. "Don't you usually go out and do whatever Chloe's do on Thursday nights?"

"I was about to leave... but now I think I'll stay."

Biting the inside of my cheek in frustration, I grabbed the other bag from Anders and dropped it down next to the first one. I knew Chloe would act like this, I mean, she's Chloe, it's part of her nature or something. I've learned the hard way from walking in late from the library or a work out in the gym to find her in bed with some guy, resorting in me either showing them out or me blasting music in my earphones and hiding under my covers. Any cute boy who enters her life in one way or another, she was willing to try anything to get him. But not this time. Not with my brother.

Chloe continued to stare at Anders as he awkwardly took a seat on my bed. I sighed, knowing this was going to be coming sooner or later.

"This is Chloe, my roommate," I said monotonously, gesturing lazily in her direction. "Chloe, this is Anders, my brother."

Her eyes got big. "I didn't know you had a hot brother!"

"Have you not looked at the pictures on my desk?" I asked her as I grabbed the framed photograph of Anders and I in Disneyland when I was sixteen and he was twenty one. It was years old, but it wasn't like he changed all that much.

Chloe shrugged, barely looking at the picture in my hand. "I thought he was a friend or a cousin maybe. Not your brother."

This always seemed to happen. Whenever my friends would meet Anders, they would suddenly forget how to speak English or failed to remember how to walk. Before he had left for pilot training, all my soccer teammates back in high school fell head over cleats for him every time he showed up at a game. So maybe Anders was a little bit good looking in that brooding kind of way, but so was Jace and William, but I didn't see girls falling at their feet for them. Maybe it was just an American thing, I don't know.

"Where will you be staying?" Chloe asked Anders.

"The floor," I answered for him.

She looked at me disgustingly. "You're going to let your brother just sleep on the floor while you take the bed? Come off it."

"The floor is fine," Anders said from my bed. "It's familiar ground to me. Uh, pun not intended."

"He's in the military," I explained.

"Hot and brave!" she expressed, swiveling in her computer chair to get a better look at Anders. "Have you won any medals? How do you sleep with the memories of all the dead bodies you've seen? Have you killed a man?"

"He flies helicopters," I deadpanned, making Chloe's excited grin disappear.

Anders scuffed at me. "You couldn't let me have this one time to pretend to be a badass."

"Well," Chloe said as she closed her laptop. "I really would love to stay and get to know more about you, but I promised I would help Abby with some school work." She grabbed her jacket and key to the dorm room and then headed to the door. "But don't hesitate to take my bed if you want something more comfortable than the floor. I don't mind," she said with a crafty smile before she left the room.

"I kind of like her," Anders pondered, and then laughed once he saw the face I was giving him. "Oh, come off it," he mocked in his best British accent and most charming smile.

I took a seat on my bed and watched Anders look around the small room. He took his time as he leaned over the bed to see the photographs I had taken of landscapes around the university and some old pictures from California. He lingered on a photo that was in a black frame of the two of us and our parents, but didn't say anything as he moved onto something else to look at.

"You have quite the collection of male clothing," Anders' observed as he lifted a leather jacket and Niall's boxers from the top of my dresser.

He was holding the briefs from the edge of the waistband with only his forefinger and thumb like there were possible unmentionable things on them. But he didn't know they had been washed... and that I was the last person to wear them.

"Stop, don't even go there, Anders," I said tiredly. "The jacket is Harry's."

"Harry... who's Harry?"

I looked at him and thought about how I was supposed to answer that. According to Coach and the chancellor, Harry was my boyfriend. But between the two of us... I had absolutely no idea. And ever since he told me that my heart wasn't in it, I was more confused than ever.

Anders must have seen the mental struggle because he let the question go with a nod and put the clothing back down on my dresser.

"The boxers are Niall's," I confessed. "And don't even start assuming anything because your theories would be wrong."

"Niall? The dude who planned all this?" Anders asked, joining me on the bed. "So, what's the story there, anyways? He said he messed up and that I was his token to making everything right again."

I leaned my head against the wall and looked at my brother, debating if it was even worth wasting my breath to tell him the story. I eventually caved and explained everything that happened, how Niall stole the essay about my parents and then when I went to his dorm to find something to use against him.

I expected Anders to tell me what to do, that I was right to be angry. I did not, however, expect him to start laughing and say, "You need to get over yourself."

"What?"

Anders looked at me like he generally understood where I was coming from, but his words said the opposite. "You have been holding a grudge against the guy for something as mediocre as a bee sting. Don't you see how unreasonable you're being, Lynn?"

"He intentionally stole my essay right off our professor's desk!" I shouted at him. "That's like reading my diary! Anders, he knew how I felt about people finding out about what happened to our parents."

"And have you ever thought about why he might have gone out of his way to get the essay?" Anders asked. "I love you, Lynn, I really do, but sometimes you can be really dense. Put yourself in his shoes for a second and think. Wouldn't you want to know what happened to them? Wouldn't you want to go and find the answers? Wouldn't you want to understand why it's a secret!?"

I sat frozen on my bed, my brother's words lingering in the air between us. Anders always had this capability about being right to the point that I just wanted to punch him in the face. This was one of those times.

"Do you know what he wrote his paper on?" he asked me.

"No."

"Then fuck it. Go and take his essay and see what he wrote." Anders leaned his head against the wall and looked at me with a grin. "Or better yet, just ask him about it. Chances are he will tell you."

Anders was right. And then I found myself laughing.

Anders was always right.

× × ×

When are all your birthdays?

-Jess